


Good As It Gets

by SeeEmRunning



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bad Boys, Episode: s09e07 Bad Boys, Gen, POV Sam Winchester, Pre-Series, Wendigo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 21:12:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1402606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeeEmRunning/pseuds/SeeEmRunning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With Dean at Sonny's, Sam and John are left to hunt together. Twenty-five years later, a similar hunt in the same area brings the brothers back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good As It Gets

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [agelade's Tumblr prompt](http://agelade.tumblr.com/prompts): John takes twelve year old Sam hunting without Dean AU — Sam’s experience is unpleasant enough that he’s never brought it up to Dean and has mostly blocked it out (explaining why he doesn’t react more strongly to it, and maybe he had a concussion or something when they came back for Dean to explain why the kid wasn’t jumping up and down? Idk.)
> 
> At the time of writing, 'realcain' is not a Tumblr user.

_Sam was never told **anything.**_

_The first eight years of his life had been one lie after another. Dad came in broken and bleeding because he tripped. They moved because Dad was a traveling salesman and he had to travel. Monsters didn't exist. The bottle marked 'Jack Daniels' was full of apple juice._

_So when he was twelve and Dad told him Dean was fine, off hunting with someone else, Sam's bullshit meter went crazy. "Really?" he said, unconvinced._

_"Really. Pack your things, Sammy, there's a wendigo in Washington."_

_Dad's face was hard and closed, but not apprehensive, which was more evidence that he was lying. Usually when they moved Dad was a little aloof, a little more careful, like he was expecting Sam to start yelling._

_He thought maybe one day he would. Just to see what would happen._  
***  
Dean's arm hits Sam's stomach, and he jerks awake. "Wha?"

"Rise and shine, Sam," Dean grunts.

"Where are we?" he asks, picking up his water bottle and getting out of the car.

"Olympia. There's a wendigo in the area."

Sam swallows. "Really."

"Yeah. Apparently it's off its cycle, since it's been twenty-five years since the last kills. 'Course, usually something's off its cycle, I make sure I have pickles and ice cream handy, yanno?"

Sam rolls his eyes and doesn't answer as he grabs his bag from the trunk. Dean's been getting more and more crude lately, as if he's desperately trying to become the person he was eight years before. Back when the Mark of Cain _wasn't_ on his arm. But Sam's seen him staring into space, sweating and shivering, and he knows what addiction looks like. As angry and as pissed-off as he is, and as many boundaries as he's setting, he can play the little brother to keep Dean from going to Crowley for another fix. As long as Dean doesn't push too far, they're fine.

But he knows _exactly_ why the wendigo's off its kill cycle.  
***  
 _He sat quietly in the front seat. When Dean was with him, he and Dad could talk for hours about anything while Sam stayed quiet in the back and read. But Dad slapped the book out of his hands and told him he was being rude for reading, and he wouldn't tolerate rudeness in his sons. Of course, then he stayed silent himself, so Sam wasn't quite sure why occupying himself was rude. The radio was off._

_When they finally reached Olympia after hours of stifling silence and Dad checked them into a motel, Sam lugged in his the gear bags, four heavy, weapons-filled duffels that dwarfed his small frame, as well as his own. Dad said carrying all the weight would make him stronger and get rid of the 'pudge' Sam had. Sam wasn't sure carrying bags that weighed almost as much as he did was good strength training, but it made him hurt, so maybe it was._

_When they got inside and laid the salt lines as they always did, Dad pushed a bundle of newspaper clippings. "Read and summarize," he ordered.  
***  
Dean's tooling around town doing who knows what ( _drinking_ , Sam's mind whispers) while Sam sits in the library. He may get wireless in the motel, but the room is ugly and moldy and cold. The library is temperature-controlled and quiet, and - most importantly - has high enough tables his knees don't hit the bottom. An added bonus? Microfiche machines. Which he needs, because the library's digitization project hasn't yet gotten around to twenty-five-year-old newspaper articles._

_He still remembers a lot of it, just like he remembers Jess's favorite food and he remembers the Rawhead's face when Dean had his heart attack and he remembers all ten words on the only spelling test he ever failed - _crazier, curve, resistance, stomach, fuse, reservations, heir, neither, threw, remainder_ , fourth grade, the day after his first grave desecration, when he'd been exhausted and had a minor concussion. All his failures are forever seared into his brain, and that hunt was definitely a failure._

_He reads the articles anyway and finds the caves on a map. Finished, he rises and leaves to find Dean. If he's sober enough, they can go tonight, get this thing finished before it hurts more people.  
***  
 _They ate dinner, Dad quizzing him all the while about what he'd read and how to trap and kill wendigoes. Sam answered each one correctly and tried to otherwise stay quiet and out of the way.__

__Dad spread a map out on the table once their cashew chicken was in the trash. "Where do wendigoes hole up?" he asked, and Sam froze._ _

__Shit. He should know this. They'd talked about wendigoes before - they must have, or he wouldn't have known that it takes fire to kill them._ _

__Thankfully, Dad was talking to himself. He circled three areas on the map - cave systems, Sam saw from a quick glance at the legend. Right, hibernating nocturnals. They'd need somewhere dark and isolated._ _

__"It's too dark to go now with you," Dad said. "Best we can do is hope there isn't some group of campers out there. There shouldn't be, if they've been paying attention to the news or the rangers. Ten disappearances in four days gets noticed. Go to bed."  
***  
Sure enough, Sam finds Dean in a bar. "Hey."_ _

__Dean grunts, downs his whiskey, and orders another double. The bartender looks at Sam. "What can I get you?"_ _

__"Nothing, thanks. Looks like I'm driving." Sam smiles at her._ _

__She smiles back. "We have soda," she offers. "Or orange juice, milk, water…?"_ _

__Dean throws him a dark look Sam interprets easily. He was moving in on her before he got here, Sam interrupted, and now she's paying attention to the wrong brother._ _

__"Really, I'm fine," he says. "Just here for my brother. Or his keys."_ _

__She laughs. Dean pushes a familiar keyring over to Sam, who picks it up and says, "Or I could stay a while?" Dean grunts again and waves him off - part and parcel of the new old-Dean is speaking Caveman, apparently._ _

__It's a good thing he knows Dean so well, because otherwise he might interpret handing over the keys as a sign of trust rather than a sign that Dean's going to be so sloshed later he might think driving drunk is a good idea. Sam's not looking forward to dealing with either the drunkenness or tomorrow's hangover, but he leaves the bar without causing a fuss._ _

__It's only five in the afternoon, so Sam changes into his Fed suit and takes the Impala up to the park where people have been going missing to talk to the rangers. They give him a better area of where the hikers went missing. It matches with the earlier reports. Maybe he should go check it out now - no. If he dies, Dean will be left alone to be manipulated by Crowley. He can't let that happen._ _

__He spends the rest of the night Googling around for information on the Mark of Cain he hasn't already found. He does find one site claiming Abel had been _Lucifer's_ favorite, not God's, and Cain had killed him before he could go completely darkside. His spine prickles uncomfortably - he's been in that position, or something an awful lot like it, right down to the brother who won't let him make his own decisions. But really, what are the odds that everyone but one Tumblr user going by 'realcain' got it wrong?  
***  
 _It was cool and damp, as was typical for a Washington March. Sam struggled to keep up with Dad's long strides. A twig cracked under his booted foot and Dad twisted to send him a glare. Sam knew better than to speak to apologize.__ _

___Once he'd been silent, but his latest growth spurt had left him unsure of where all his limbs were. Dean was sixteen and still growing, so Sam probably had at least another few years of ineptitude to look forward to. He resettled his backpack and paid more attention to the placement of his feet, determined not to make the same mistake again._ _ _

___They had finished looking through the first cave system and were on their way to the second when the wendigo broke pattern and came after them in the daytime. It caught Sam before he even knew it was there, flinging him into the air. He let out a strangled yelp as he tumbled down a nearby gully._ _ _

___"Sammy!" Dad bellowed._ _ _

___"I'm fine," Sam yelled back up to him. He pulled the flare from his backpack. There were exposed roots everywhere, and Sam used them to help pull himself up, ignoring what was probably a very large bruise covering most of his back._ _ _

___He made it to the top just in time to see Dad hit a tree and slump. Sam fired the flare hastily, catching the wendigo's hand. It shrieked and came at him, slower than it would uninjured and at night, barely faster than Sam would be. He reloaded to fire again; his training carried through and it burst into flames with a hideous shriek._ _ _

___Dad pushed himself to sitting, blood trickling from his forehead. "Took you long enough."_ _ _

___Sam sighed, hoping that was just a cover for worry. "Yes, sir. You all right?"_ _ _

___"I'll be fine. Might need a few stitches, but we still need to find the thing's lair and save anyone who might be alive."_ _ _

___"Yes, sir." Sam looked away from his first kill, now just ashes on the ground. "Then we'd better look for the caves."_ _ _

___As they trudged along, Sam couldn't help asking, "Where's Dean?"_ _ _

___"I told you. He's hunting."_ _ _

___"You'd never let us hunt with anyone but you," Sam pointed out. "And you told us both you wouldn't take me out for my first kill without him along."_ _ _

___Dad winced. "Drop it, Sam."_ _ _

___"Dad. What happened to Dean?"_ _ _

___Dad whirled on him. "He's missing, okay?" he snapped._ _ _

___Sam reared back, startled. "What?"_ _ _

___"He went on a hunt with Elkins and nobody can find him. Can we get on with the wendigo now?"_ _ _

___Sam hurried to catch up, bewildered and hurt. Why hadn't Dad just_ told _him Dean was missing? Oh, god, Dean was missing. Dean was probably dead. Dean was hurt, bleeding out somewhere because Sam and Dad hadn't been there to look out for him. Would he even get a chance to say goodbye, or would Dean just vanish without a trace? He didn't think he could stand not knowing for sure._  
***  
When Dean's hangover abates enough for them to talk, Sam lays out the map for Dean. "The wendigo's probably in this area," he tells Dean, circling the set of caves on the northern edge._ _

__"Why do you say that?"_ _

__"Because they all went missing here," Sam tells him, pointing at the cluster of dots. "This cave system makes the most sense."_ _

__"Fine," Dean grunts, downing his coffee. "Let's kill this son of a bitch fast. Don’t know why I let you talk me into this."_ _

__"Because it's been three weeks and we have no leads on Abaddon. Change of pace, fresh eyes." Sam shrugs and doesn't tell him about that hunt when he was twelve and Dean was missing. Having the best time of his adolescence, Sam knows now. He doesn't begrudge him that - he just hates the lies. He also doesn't point out it was Dean who found the hunt._ _

__"Whatever." Dean shrugs on a jacket. "Let's go. And I'm driving, so give me back my keys."_ _

__Sam hands them over. He'd like to drive, if only because it's been weeks since he's done anything more than a run to town for groceries, but it's Dean's car and it's not worth the argument. It feels like a lifetime ago Dean pulled over and showed him the parts of the engine again._ _

__Well, technically, it had been _several_ lifetimes ago, but Sam does his best to not dwell on Hell, too afraid of the hallucinations coming back. He still has nightmares about it._ _

__They don't speak on the way to the park, or on their hike. Sam uses the time to mull over Abaddon and Gadreel. It isn't until they're inside the cave that Dean speaks._ _

__"Hey, check it out. Chalk."_ _

__"Really?" Sam gets closer, plays his flashlight over the cave wall, and feels the bottom drop out of his stomach. He recognizes them - he _made_ a few of them. But how are they still here? They should have rubbed off sometime in the past twenty-five years.  
***  
 _"All right, Sammy," Dad said. "In and out, fast, okay? You didn't lose your flashlight when you went down the hill, did you?"__ _

___"No," Sam said, pulling it from his backpack and showing it to him._ _ _

___"Okay. Light it up and let's go." Dad turned on his own Mag-Lite. The ambient light penetrated barely five feet into the cave before there was a bend and it was lost. "Hello?" Dad called loudly, echoes bouncing back to him._ _ _

___In case anyone could answer, Sam remembered. Some of them might still be alive. He called out himself, and then he and Dad alternated, pausing between calls to give them time to answer._ _ _

___The cave forked, at one point, and Dad pulled out a piece of chalk and drew an arrow down the left turning, then an 'E' on the wall next to the tunnel they'd been walking down. "Why am I doing this?" he asked._ _ _

___"So we know where we went and how to get out," Sam answered instantly._ _ _

___"Right." Dad drew another symbol next to the 'E'. "And this one?"_ _ _

___Sam swallowed. "So if we die the next hunters know where we went and to be careful."_ _ _

___"Right," Dad said grimly. He slipped the chalk back into his pocket and they continued on._ _ _

___He made it five minutes before he chanced asking, "If we already killed the wendigo, why would other hunters come?"_ _ _

___"If something kills us, there's something else down here," Dad told him. "Think before you speak."_ _ _

___They weren't in that tunnel, or in any of the forks down that one. It was a warren down there, too easy to get lost. Dad refused to let him take lead, which Sam was silently grateful for. This was the first time he'd hunted something other than a spirit, and though he'd never seen how wendigoes kept their prey, he'd certainly read about it. He wanted to have a chance to steel himself before he saw it, if only so he didn't throw up and embarrass himself in front of Dad._ _ _

___They backtracked and went down the other tunnel, Dad remarking the tunnels as they went. He didn't wash the chalk off - that was asking for trouble, if they couldn't remember which tunnels they'd already gone down - but he did cross out marks on every intersection they backtracked to._ _ _

___They found the victims moments before everything went haywire._  
***  
They make their own marks with chalk. Sam pulls Dean down the right-hand tunnel before he can protest, and continues to choose the right tunnel every time. They don't talk, both hyperaware of the cannibalistic monster waiting to eat them alive._ _

__It takes a little while exploring before they find the hollow where the wendigo's holed up. There are nine people hanging from the ceiling mostly intact; there are two more missing from the waist and knees down, respectively. Both of them are dead, and the wendigo's nowhere in sight._ _

__Sam signals to Dean to watch the door and moves forward to check pulses on the intact ones. The first two he checks are dead - bled out, dehydrated, panicked into heart attacks, no way to tell. The third jerks at his touch and opens his mouth to scream; Sam covers his mouth with his own hand and whispers, "It's okay. We're here to help. Do not scream."_ _

__The man nods, and Sam takes away his hand. "What's your name?"_ _

__"Jerry."_ _

__"Okay, Jerry. Just - I need to check to see if the others are alive before I free you, okay? And then we need to stick around a little bit longer, so we can take care of your attacker-"_ _

__"You can't!" he hisses. "It's not human."_ _

__"We know," Sam answers softly. "It's called a wendigo. It's okay. This is what me and my brother do. We know how to kill it." He half-smiles and moves on._ _

__When he starts moving rock to free the hikers, Dean whispers, "Count?"_ _

__"Four alive," Sam whispers back._ _

__"Damn it."_ _

__"Damn it?" a woman demands, keeping her voice low._ _

__"He means there are seven dead, that's all," Sam says soothingly. "Come on - pull a little bit, there you go."_ _

__Her hand is bleeding freely where it caught on rock, but she stands on a backpack to help him pull at the rock of the next victim, who's unconscious._ _

__"You're very calm," Sam observes._ _

__"I do mountain rescue," she tells him. "Trust me, I'm freaking out inside."_ _

__Sam smiles. "I know the feeling," he says._ _

__"I'm Janie, by the way."_ _

__"Sam."_ _

__They continue working and almost have him free when Dean yells, "Sam!" Sam grabs his flare gun from his waistband and pivots on the ball of his foot to face the wendigo.  
***  
 _They were two steps inside when there was a shriek and Dad was thrown back, knocking Sam over with him. Sam scrambled to get out from under him and find extra flares in his backpack. There were two of them? How were there two - weren't wendigoes solitary?__ _

___He'd just managed to reload when there was another shriek, nails on a broken-glass chalkboard, and Sam was shoved against a sharp rock. He felt something puncture his back moments before the wendigo's claw sank deep into his shoulder._ _ _

___His_ left _shoulder, thankfully, and he twisted his right hand to fire the flare gun. This close, he couldn't miss. He also couldn't avoid being burned, the wendigo going up in a flash, all the way to the claw still in Sam's shoulder, and the rock in his back was the only thing keeping him from collapsing.__ _

___Funny, wasn't it, how he could be grateful for a piece of a cave literally inside him?_ _ _

___His shoulder wasn't bleeding. Cauterized, his mind helpfully supplied. The fire stopped the bleeding._ _ _

___"Dad?" he tried._ _ _

___Apparently speaking was the key to an adrenaline crash, because suddenly he could_ feel _the rock in him. He cried out and tried to breathe in his chest, not his belly like he'd been taught.__ _

___"Dad," he whispered, dizziness swamping him for a moment. He felt tears running down his cheeks; he hadn't even realized he was crying._ _ _

___"Sammy?" Dad groaned._ _ _

___"Da- ah!" Sam closed his eyes and breathed through clenched teeth. There was something wet below his shoes; he hoped it was water._ _ _

___"Sammy," Dad said again, rolling to his feet. "What are you- why aren't you helping them?"_ _ _

___"I've been impaled," he said faintly._ _ _

___Dad frowned and played the flashlight over Sam's body. "You look fine to me," he said dismissively, turning away._ _ _

___"Back."_ _ _

___Dad came closer and looked at the wall behind him. "Oh shit."_ _ _

___Sam managed a smile, oddly calm. Wasn't that a sign of shock? Or something? Pretty sure it was shock that had calm as a symptom. Or was that something else? Dehydration?_ _ _

___Dad put his hand on Sam's chest. "Stay calm," he said. "Stay calm."_ _ _

___"I'm trying," Sam breathed. His eyes were going out. "But I think I may need a hospital for this one."_ _ _

___Dad's hand moved to his cheek. Sam would give anything to see his expression._ _ _

___He was never quite sure what happened after; everything went hazy for a while. The next clear memory he had was being at Uncle Bobby's house with Dad, and then his father left for a little while. Bobby poured pills down his throat - painkillers and antibiotics, probably - and explained the cave wall had nicked his intestines. The doctors had sewn him back up, but he'd need to take it easy for a while. The wendigoes had been a nesting pair, which none of them had known was possible. Dad had lit up the eggs, so they probably wouldn't ever hatch._ _ _

___Then Dad told Sam he'd found Dean, and they left._  
***  
Dean hadn't needed to scream for him, because he gets the flare gun up and fired before the wendigo gets to him. It goes up with a shriek that makes the hair on Sam's neck stand on end._ _

__"There's that dealt with," Dean says, sounding annoyed._ _

__"Great. Help me get them down," Sam says._ _

__Dean smirks and joins him in shoving at the rock trapping the unconscious man's hands. Janie catches him before he can fall to the ground and puts him down gently as Sam and Dean move on._ _

__Jerry's still conscious when they get him down, and the other woman there is deep into shock. Sam wraps his jacket around her and hands her over to Jerry to lead. He and Dean check over the unconscious man for injuries; save a deep bite on his arm and a shallow one on his leg, they're all superficial. They guess dehydration to be the reason for his lack of consciousness, so Sam slings him over his shoulders in a fireman's carry and they head back out, following their symbols._ _

__He's still not sure why he never told Dean about that hunt. At first it was probably the drugs, but later - why not later? Was it because Dean had been so eager to see Sam's first kill and had ended up missing the first two? Or because being lost on a hunt trumped whatever misery Sam had been in while he recuperated at Bobby's? Now, of course, he knows Dean spent the time in a boys' home, and it was the best months of his adolescence and possibly his life, but then - well. Then he'd been a chubby twelve-year-old looking for approval and trying not to whine about something that had happened two months before._ _

__They're at the ranger station before they know it, and they drop off the victims and head out before the actual cops get there. Janie and Jerry both wave at them, and Sam waves back before he climbs into the passenger seat._ _

__It was good to stretch the hunting muscles and scratch the itch of inactivity, no matter how easily the wendigo had gone down in the end, but now they really need to focus on finding Abaddon. Sam needs to learn more about the Mark of Cain and what it's doing to his brother internally. Dean needs to stop trying to replace one addiction with another. Cas needs to answer his phone for once and put Sam's mind to rest._ _

__But for now, it's them and the open road and Dean isn't pushing him. It's as good as their life ever gets._ _


End file.
